Harry Potter and the Rite of Passage
by meeko-may
Summary: Harry's fifth year is here, and he must deal with Evil Overlords, death, and hormones abound. Dumbledore is collecting allies and making them pose as teachers, more people break out of Azkaban, and lots of people disappear. Its a comedy. ^_^


Harry Potter and the Rite of Passage  
  
by meeko_may  
  
This contains spoils for everything up to GoF. Step away if you don't want to be spoiled. To warn, this is self edited. I have no beta. You want to beta me? You know you do! ^_^ Drop me a line. Trust me, it will be good for your soul.  
  
Summary: Harry's fifth year is here, and he has to learn to deal with death, Evil Overlords, classes, and of course, romance and hormones abound. Dumbledore is collecting allies at Hogwarts and making them pose as teachers, Fudge still refuses to admit Voldemort has returned, more people break out of Azkaban, lots of people that might be a bit important to the story disappear. Its a comedy.  
  
So, another wacko is out trying to write the fifth book in the series. But why, you ask, start when the next book is due out in a little over a week? Well, you see, I've been patiently waiting for almost three years for this book, and I want to savor it. Love it hug, squeeze it and never let it go. I know and understand that it will probably be another three years before the next book comes out, and I need something to play with. I loved the fourth book, I have a wide canvas to work with, I've had years to create and its time to let it out. If you're like me and want something to look forward to after spending two days nonstop reading, welcome to my world!   
  
Some people might recognize the beginning of this as something I posted a few months ago. I didn't like where it was headed, so I scarped the project. Then, I re-read the bits I had on my harddrive, and decided to try again. I just liked the beginning too much to just delete it, so I kept that. I think it did match Harry and how he would think.  
  
Oh, by the by, this will be an epic and continue until I decide to end it. Which may or may not be with Harry's seventh year. Come on, show me the love. Tell what you think. Remember, the review button is your friend. So, without further ado, we open on summer time.  
  
***  
  
Harry Potter was not a happy little wizard.   
  
Of course, this wasn't public knowledge. He had Hermione to thank for that. Rita Seeker had been sure to stay clear of all things Harry Potter in her daily column after the incident last year between she, Hermione, and that unbreakable jar, though she still filled her readers' heads with the latest gossip on anything else her quill could find, be it true or not. So, Harry's less than jovial state had escaped public notice that summer. The only ones that knew were Ron and Hermione, as always, and for some reason, they had been surprised.  
  
What was there to be surprised about? Last year, Voldemort had killed Cedric and used Harry's blood to bring him back from the brink of death. How was he supposed to feel? Excited? Proud?!  
  
He let out the breath he didn't even know he was holding. He did not know how he was going to deal with going back to Hogwarts. It was hard to write back to Ron, Hermione, Hagrid, and Sirius, so how was he going to handle all the students and Malfoy? They all tried to write at least once a week, even when Harry only wrote back twice the entire summer. They each sent their presents for his birthday: books from Hermione, the latest Quidditch accessories catalogue from Ron, a cake from Hagrid (which he just smiled at and never tried to eat), and a picture of Sirius, Lupin, and Buckbeak the hippogriff in a sunny, happy, warm place from his godfather. He was thankful for the fact that they thought of him, but he just didn't know what to say to them about what had happened.   
  
He was better than he had been during the beginning of the holidays. It had been hard dealing with both the Dursleys and his own grief, but their tireless chores and the hard labor had kept him from thinking. It was not until one night in the middle of July when he woke up from his nightmare of Cedric strangling him and screaming, begging why did Harry kill him that he actually had been forced to deal with his demons.  
  
At first, Harry thought he was still in the nightmare. Cedric was standing at the foot of his bed, scowling at him. So, Harry had just looked at him and closed his eyes, preparing himself for the screaming to start.  
  
"Oh, stop that," came the curt reply to Harry's actions.  
  
Harry's eyes flew open. Cedric was still at the foot of his bed and still glaring at him.  
  
"Cedric? Is that you?"  
  
The other boy looked pained at Harry's words.   
  
"Not," he paused, trying to choice his words, "not exactly."   
  
Harry looked at him warily. "Then who are?" Harry then took in the fact that Cedric was not whole. He was transparent with a grey tinge, though not smoky, like the ghosts in Hogwarts. "Are you his ghost?"  
  
Cedric sighed. "Not exactly." He stated with the same pained expression.  
  
"Then what are you?!"  
  
"I'm..." Cedric searched for the words again, staring hard at Harry. "I'm like his shadow. I'm the part of him still bound here." Cedric rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. "I guess that's how to describe it."  
  
"You guess? Don't you know what you are?" Harry was angry. His dreams had the nerve to invade his reality. Reality was the one place left he could escape his life.  
  
"Well, this hasn't been explained to me! I've just been stuck following you around since it happened! I just--" He stopped again to find the right wording and calm himself, "I just know that this," Cedric waved vaguely at his transparent form, "isn't all of me. I know once some things are fixed, I can leave."  
  
"What things? Fix what?"  
  
Cedric glared at him. "You think if I knew that I would still be here?"  
  
Harry sighed, raised his glasses, and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "How do you know that you're not all Cedric?"  
  
Cedric sat down on Harry's bed and looked out the window for several moments before answering. "I just think about some things too much."  
  
"Like what?"  
  
"Mom, Dad..." Cedric looked at Harry from the corner of his eyes, "Cho."  
  
Harry looked at him in silence before mumbling an "oh".  
  
"And for some reason, I just keep ending up here with you every time I try to go see them!" Cedric got from his seat and marched up to loom over Harry. He reached forward and tried to grab the boy but Cedric's hands passed through him. Harry felt as if his entire upper body had been emerged in water and the air was so thick he couldn't catch his breath. Cedric gasped and quickly pulled his hands out of the boy. Harry felt the blood rush to his head as if he were upside down and the air in his lungs was sudden so very cold.  
  
He finally came back to reality with the realization that he had fallen partially out of bed and he was hanging upside down, facing his open window. His glasses were hanging from his left ear, and he saw a blurry grey image over him that must have been Cedric.  
  
"Harry, are you all right?" the blur asked him.  
  
Harry groaned and corrected his glasses. Cedric was indeed over him, concern evident in his eyes.  
  
"What did you do to me?" Harry asked quietly, rubbing his head where a headache was being to bloom.  
  
"I just...I touched you. I was upset...and...I touched you. I'm sorry."  
  
With that said, Cedric was gone.  
  
Harry never spoke to Cedric again. He saw him sometimes out of the corner of his eye when he was working hard on something for Aunt Petunia, or sometimes when he woke in the middle of the night, Harry swore he saw Cedric watching him from the foot of his bed, but when he blinked, he was gone. Yet, somehow, Harry knew Cedric didn't blame him for his death, though he may have been upset at Harry because for some reason, a part of him was bound to Harry.   
  
He never told anyone about his late night visit with Cedric. He was afraid of what his friends might say. Like Ron had said during their second year, even in the wizarding world, hearing voices wasn't a good sign. He didn't want to think what they would say if he told them he was having conversations with the boy that died last summer. So, he kept it to himself.  
  
Now, he was sitting on his bed wondering how he was going to get to Hogwarts this year. The Weasleys had wanted to take him for the whole summer, but Dumbledore had forbidden it. The Weasleys had then tried to take him for the last few weeks of the summer, but the Dursleys were bent on preventing him from ever returning to his school, as always. After the fiasco last year when Arthur Weasley and his sons had tried to use the Floo system to appear in the Dursleys' fireplace and then the twins had enlarged Dudley's tongue with one of their magical experiments, Uncle Vernon had refused to allow any wizards come near his home, even though it would mean Harry would be gone for another year. Uncle Vernon much rather torture the boy than see him happy.  
  
The twins, Fred and George, had wanted to search the Forbidden Forest for the flying car, but Mrs. Weasley had stopped them before they could try Apparating without their licenses. They were currently trying to find a way to trick Percy into finding the car for them (the current plan seemed to be to convince their brother it would give him a promotion, but Ron did not put much faith in the idea). Hermione was convinced that if Harry just explained the situation to Dumbledore, everything would work out. Sirius wanted to take him by force, but a letter from Lupin convinced Harry there was no reason to worry that his godfather would be captured trying to save him from his relatives.  
  
"At least Dobby isn't here to save me," he whispered out loud with a frown. He would be expelled or dead by now if the house elf tried to help him.  
  
At that thought, he heard a knocking out in the hallway. Harry thought instantly that he had doomed himself to being "helped" by house elfs again, and thought of hiding in his closest. The knocking came again, but this time, it was against his door followed by a familiar, "'ello? Are you 'arry's room?" Harry wrinkled his brow in confusion. Yes, he had heard a girl with a french accent talking to his door. He got up from his bed and tip toed to the door, clutching his wand and prepared to face whatever evil that was sure to get him in trouble with the Ministry, as he did every summer before returning to school. Taking a deep breath, he twisted the knob and pulled. To his surprise, he found Fleur Delacour on her knees holding her wand with a crystal dangling by a string at the tip. She looked up at Harry with wide eyes, just as surprised. Before Harry could ask why she was kneeling at his door, she launched herself at him as best she could while on her knees, wrapped her arms tightly about his waist, and some how kicking the door shut in the process.  
  
"'arry! We were zo worried about you! I waz zore ze giants 'ad eaten you!" Fleur wailed this into his chest.   
  
Harry's mind would have wondered what the girl meant by giants, but he was too busy trying to process that a beautiful girl was snuggled against his chest. He was a teenage boy, after all, with very little contact with girls, beside Hermione and Ginny, neither of whom snuggled against his chest. Without warning, she lurched away and grabbed him by his shoulders, staring intently at his face.   
  
"Zey did not 'urt you, did zey?"   
  
Harry was still in hormonal bliss, a place far from reality. Fleur panicked at the glazed look in his eyes and began to frantically poke him with her wand while watching the dangling crystal. She managed to poke him in a ...sensitive area which caused him to return to the world as wizards' know it exclaiming several words that he was sure, somehow, Mrs. Weasley heard, and became very disappointed in him.   
  
This pushed Fleur to action. She grabbed Harry's face with both hands and forced him to focus on her. "'ARRY! IF YOU CAN 'EAR ME, DO NOT WORRY! WE WILL ZAVE YOU!" She said each word slowly, carefully, and was loud enough that Harry was positive Mrs. Weasley had heard this time. Without further preamble, she dropped Harry and ran out his room, her footsteps thumping quickly down the stairs.  
  
Distantly, he heard several voices raised in argument downstairs followed soon after by the front door slamming and a car engine blasting up the road. This strange occurrence reminded him that, yes, he had just been prodded by a gorgeous french girl, who was a witch, and she had been in his relatives' house. Harry thought hard and remembered Aunt Petunia saying something about rich company coming...sometime...he really tried not to pay too much attention to the Dursleys. He was pondering what Fleur could have meant by giants when the outer wall of his room decided to explode.   
  
He must have passed out because the next thing he knew, Fleur was looming over him again, dangling her crystal. His head felt so heavy, his ears were ringing, and right now, he did not want to move. In the corner of his eye, he saw Cedric watching him with concern.  
  
"I told you, 'e iz 'urt!"  
  
"I think being throw across a room by an exploding wall *would* hurt him!"  
  
Harry knew that voice...it liked to wake him up at 5 AM in his nightmares.  
  
"No no! My crystal said 'e was 'urt before!"  
  
"Damnit, Fleur! We were supposed to be subtle! How are we going to explain this to those muggles? Wait, forget the muggles, what about the MINISTRY?! AND STOP POKING HIM!"  
  
The sharp pain in his chest disappeared.  
  
"Muggles?! Zey were giants! Zey were going to eat 'im!"  
  
Harry heard a deep, resigned sigh. Yes, he definitely knew that voice. He sat up with some difficulty and looked up. Where his back wall once stood, there was Oliver Wood, leaning heavily on his trusty Nimbus 2001. As he looked at the wall, which was now just a gaping hole, he wondered idly why Uncle Vernon had not broken down the door yet. Cedric was now gone, of course.  
  
"They were not giants! I know you've never seen fat people before, but your Headmistress is a half-giant--"  
  
"Zhe iz big boned!"  
  
"Excuse me," Harry spoke up for the first time, breaking a heated staring contest, "but why are you two breaking into my house, screaming about giants, and blowing up my room? I would like to know before MY UNCLE MURDERS ME!!!"  
  
Oliver winced, but Fleur just blinked at him.  
  
"Oh, I slipped ze giants a zleeping potion. Zey zould be out for 'ours."  
  
Oliver just stared at Fleur wordlessly before sighing again, leaning even more heavily on his broom. "Why did you slip Harry's relatives a sleeping potion?"  
  
"Zey might 'ave attacked or worse, eaten 'Arry! Rule number 159, when cornered in a dining zituation and fear for your life or others, use zleeping potion and question later." She tutted at Oliver in way that reminded Harry momentarily of Hermione. "Constant Vigilance! You never listen zo Messer Moody."  
  
"That's right, I don't listen to Moody, because half of his rules are illegel!" Wood rubbed at his eyes tiredly. "Is that why you charmed the toilet to spit fire?"  
  
"I 'ad to find a way to zearch for 'Arry." She held up her dangling crystal. "Zee! It led me right to 'is door!"  
  
"But did you have to blow up the wall? Could we not have just, and this is me just tossing ideas about, just waited for Harry to open the window and climb out? Or better yet, just informed him that he need wait only a little while more and Mr. Wealsey would be here to shuttle him off to Hogwarts?" Yes, now Harry was sure. Wood had a tic just under his eye and it was bouncing like mad.  
  
"Well, zis iz an emergency!"  
  
"Just being curious, how many laws have we, and I mean 'we' only in the loose way that means I'm going to get part of the blame even though I left my wand out in car, broken in the last hour?"  
  
Fleur tipped her head to the side, thinking hard. "Only 17."  
  
"Well, can't say you don't know the manual."  
  
"Why are you here?!" Harry blurted out. He was confused as to why a Quidditch player and an ex-triwizard champion were wandering around together, sneaking into his house, giving his relatives sleeping potions, and now seemed intend on rescuing him. He thought again of Dobby, and was sure he wanted to be saved by the house elf more than these two.  
  
"I zold you! Rescue you! You're nothing but zkin and bones!" For emphasis, Harry was poked again.  
  
"Stop that," he said with a glare.   
  
"Hmph. Zee if I rescue you from 'ungry giants again."  
  
"THEY'RE NOT GIANTS!! I know this is hard to understand, but not all people are pretty little sticks! How can you be this sheltered? How?!"  
  
"Olivier...you think I'm pretty?"  
  
Harry pretended not to hear Oliver let out a small sob. He was in complete sympathy for the man. He let Fleur mummer healing charms over some of the cuts and scraps he had gotten during his flight across the room, giving time for Oliver to collect himself.  
  
"All right," Oliver said after a short pause, "new game plan." Harry smiled at the memories those words invoked. "Fleur, check the perimeter." The blond leapt up, giggling, and skipped out of the room. "Don't you dare take bits of them! They're not giants!" Harry distantly heard a few french words float up the stairs he assumed were vulgar and directed at Oliver. Of all things, Oliver smiled at that.  
  
"Yeah, she's nuts, but she does her job right. She just gets a little nutters when faced with someone that might be a magical creature. Likes to take pieces of 'em and experiment on 'em. Problem is, she's so sheltered she thinks everyone's a magical creature." During his explanation, Oliver limped toward Harry with a friendly smile. Harry realized that his old captain was not just leaning leisurely on his broom. He was using it as a make shift crutch, and obviously in pain every time he put pressure on his right leg.  
  
"Wood...your leg..."   
  
Oliver looked at him strangely. "You don't know?" He was completely surprised.  
  
"What happened?"  
  
"Oh." Wood looked at him blankly for a moment before sighing again. "Long story, tell you on the way. Just get your things." He hobbled over to Harry's open trunk and began tossing in whatever he could reach that might need to go off to school. Harry moved to help, quiet, thinking.  
  
"Wood, you two are Aurors, am I right?"  
  
"Aye."  
  
"Well...why are you here?"  
  
"Check up on you." Wood paused for a moment. "Everyone has been worried about you, you know. You haven't contacted anyone in almost a month. Everyone thought..." He let the sentence hang, unfinished, but the thought was clear: everyone thought you were died. "We were supposed to just confirm you were alive and well, and, if possible, pass a message on that the Wealseys were arriving in two weeks to take you back to school, no matter what Fudge said." Wood was spit out the Head of the Ministry's name as if were dirty water. "Just Fleur flipped when she saw your cousin." He had a crooked smile now. "Thought he had devoured you wand and all."  
  
"Why is she so upset about giants? I mean, Madam Maxime was a half-giant like Hagrid. I would think she would like them."  
  
Harry was certain he heard "big boned" travel up the stairs.  
  
"She really doesn't think her headmaster is a giant. Just don't argue it. Trust me, I've tried. She just yells and then decides you need a second head for company. All set then?" Wood snapped the trunk shut. Harry took a quick look about his room, surprised everything had been packed up so quickly. Shrugging, he went to grab an end of the trunk. "Hey there, no need for that." Wood waved his wand, which had appeared out of no where, and the trunk rose in the air. "Graduation means you can do just about anything," he said with a smile. He pointed at the gaping hole in the back wall. "Repairo!" Brick and mortar zoomed back into place followed by a seal of plaster and coating of paint. It looked as good as before.  
  
Wood gestured for the trunk to follow behind him. As the young man made his way toward the door, Harry asked plaintively, "But, where are we going?"  
  
Wood turned back with that same crooked smile. "The Ministry, of course. I don't want to leave you to face those muggles when they wake up." He shivered. "Plus, I'm going to have a lot of paper work to fill out on this little incident. Best get started now."  
  
***  
  
So, what you think? Remember, you need to press that review button and let me know. It will be good for your soul. Do it! Do it! You also want to show your love for my greatness and beta for me. You know you do!  
  
I am proud of the interactions between Cedric and Harry. I'm tired of people making Harry either angst master over poor dead Cedric and then give him a love interest to get over it or just ignore it all together. I think its time to make the boy deal with his demons.  
  
Yes, I plan to have romance in this story but it will be ON THE SIDE. Yes, I like the nice little romance story, but I can't write 'em. Need something else to distract me.   
  
Yes, I like Fleur. I think she's someone that could be interesting to write, and someone I think will come back as a small part because she appeared to have more than two dimensions by the end of GoF. Yes, I know she called Oliver "Olivier." Its the french pronunciation. Go listen to it on a baby name site. You'll understand. Yes, I know she was at Hogwarts for a time and saw "normal" people. She thought Neville was a troll, alright? Leave her alone, she just a bit of a ditz.  
  
I love Oliver, he's so cuddly with his obsession! Yes, I know he said he left his wand in a car and then he uses it. I'll explain next chapter. Why is he limping? Well...next chapter.  
  
Next time: Harry goes to the Ministry! Harry gets to see some friends! Harry goes back to Hogwarts! Some more surprises come along! Things back a little more sense! Stay tuned!  
  
AND PRESS THAT REVIEW BUTTON!  
  
~meeko_may~ 


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